True Detective: Nathan Heller Series, Book 1

When Mayor Cermak’s “Hoodlum Squad” brings Heller along on a raid with no instructions but to keep his mouth shut and his gun handy, he becomes an unwitting, unwilling part of a hit on Al Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti. As a result, Heller quits the force to become a private eye. His first job: head off a nation-shaking political assassination in Miami Beach. With the Chicago World’s Fair as a backdrop, Heller encounters a ragtag array of crooks and clients, including Al Capone, George Raft, “Dutch” Reagan, and FDR himself.

Supreme Justice

FBI agent Patti Rogers finds herself paired with the unpopular former agent on a task force investigating the killing of Supreme Court Justice Henry Venter. Reeder - nicknamed "Peep" for his unparalleled skills at reading body language - makes a startling discovery while reviewing a security tape: the shooting was premeditated, not a botched robbery. Even more chilling, the controversial Venter may not be the only justice targeted for death.

To Speak for the Dead: Jake Lassiter, Book 1

Defending a surgeon in a malpractice case, Jake Lassiter begins to suspect that his client is innocent of negligence...but guilty of murder. Add a sexy widow, a deadly drug, and a grave robbery to the stew, and you have Miami's trial of the century.

A Clean Kill in Tokyo: John Rain, Book 1

Half American, half Japanese, expert in both worlds but at home in neither, John Rain is the best killer money can buy. You tell him who. You tell him where. He doesn't care about why… Until he gets involved with Midori Kawamura, a beautiful jazz pianist—and the daughter of his latest kill.

Afterlife

The last thing FBI agent Will Brody remembers is the explosion - a thousand shards of glass surfing a lethal shock wave. He wakes without a scratch. The building is in ruins. His team is gone. Outside, Chicago is dark. Cars lie abandoned. No planes cross the sky. He's relieved to spot other people - until he sees they're carrying machetes.

The Man of Legends

New York City, New Year's weekend, 2001. Jillian Guthrie, a troubled young journalist, stumbles onto a tantalizing mystery: the same man, unaged, stands alongside Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Gandhi in three different photographs spanning eighty-five years of history.

The Good Lawyer: A Novel

A young, ambitious lawyer is eager to prove he is better than the mobster dominated family he grew up in. Working as a Bronx Legal Aid attorney he learns how to become an unbeatable defense lawyer. But it's 1982. The Spiderman rapist is on the loose and New York City is a city in fear. When an outraged victim commits suicide right before his eyes, searching for absolution and determined to prove his client's innocence, he knocks the pegs out from under the prosecution's case.

Stephani says:"Great Book. Found a new author that I'm looking forward to future Novels"

Infinity Born

When DARPA's billion-dollar program to create artificial superintelligence is sabotaged, US operative Cameron Carr is tasked with finding the culprit. He's been on high-stakes missions before, but this time the stakes are nothing less than the future of humanity. Because the race to evolve a superintelligent computer is on, and power players around the world will stop at nothing to get there first.

The Academy: A Short Story

Quitting her job as a high school science teacher to join the Seattle Police Department was an easy decision for Tracy Crosswhite. Years earlier, what should have been one of the happiest days of her life instead became her worst nightmare when her younger sister, Sarah, disappeared. After the murder trial, while her family disintegrated, Tracy turned her heartbreak and her lingering questions into a passion for justice.

The War of the Worlds Murder: Disaster Series

On October 30, 1938, rising radio star Orson Welles boondoggles the American public into believing that Martians have attacked Earth. With his clever adaptation of The War of the Worlds, the great showman proves he can get away with anything - maybe even murder. Minutes before the fictitious invasion goes live on the air, a dead body is found in the studio and the polarizing Welles is the obvious suspect.

Dead Certain: A Novel

Ella Broden is living a double life. By day, Ella works as a buttoned-up attorney on some of the city's most grueling cases. By night, she pursues her passion for singing in the darkest clubs of Manhattan. No one knows her secret, not even Charlotte, the younger sister she practically raised. But it seems she's not the only one in the family with something to hide. When Charlotte announces she's sold her first novel, Ella couldn't be more thrilled...until she gets a call that her sister's gone missing.

Quarry: A Quarry Novel, Book 1

Quarry doesn't kill just anybody these days. He restricts himself to targeting other hitmen, availing his marked-for-death clients of two services: eliminating the killers sent after them, and finding out who hired them…and then removing that problem, as well. So far he's rid of the world of nobody who would be missed. But this time he finds himself zeroing in on the grieving family of a missing cheerleader. Does the hitman's hitman have the wrong quarry in his sights?

The Baby Blue Rip-Off: A Mallory Novel, Book 1

Budding mystery writer Mallory was just trying to impress a politically correct girlfriend by delivering hot meals to little old ladies. The last thing he expected was to find his elderly charges such fascinating company, and when one sweet old gal meets an unexpectedly grisly fate, Mal sets out to find and stop the burglars who this time stole a life. The last thing the local sheriff needs, however, is a meddling civilian.

Fate of Perfection

In a corporate-controlled future where the ruling conglomerates genetically engineer their employees, Millicent Foster is the best of the best. Physically perfect and exceptionally intelligent, Millicent is granted the uncommon privilege of breeding. But her daughter inherits more than superior genetics...little Marie has a rare ability that the world has never seen, and her conglomerate, Moxidone, will stop at nothing to have sole possession of the child.

Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History

Meet Michael Blutrich, mild-mannered New York lawyer and founder of Scores, the hottest strip club in New York City history, funded by the proceeds of an insurance embezzlement scheme. All Blutrich wanted was to lay low, make the club a success, and put his criminal acts behind him. But the Mafia got involved, and soon the FBI came knocking. Scores became wildly popular, in part thanks to Blutrich's ability to successfully bend the rules of adult entertainment. Unfortunately for Blutrich, it would all soon implode.

City of Echoes: Detective Matt Jones, Book 1

On Detective Matt Jones's first night working Homicide in LA, he's called to investigate a particularly violent murder case: a man has been gunned down in a parking lot off Hollywood Boulevard, his bullet-riddled body immediately pegged as the work of a serial robber who has been haunting the Strip for months.

Night Life

New York City, 1954. The Cold War is heating up, Senator Joe McCarthy is running a witch hunt for communists in America, the newly formed CIA is fighting a turf battle with the FBI to see who will be the primary United States intelligence agency, and the bodies of murdered young men are turning up all over the city.

The Tracker: Sam Callahan, Book 1

Trust no one. Sam Callahan learned this lesson from a childhood spent in abusive foster care, on the streets, and locked in juvie. With the past behind him and his future staked on law school, he is moonlighting as a political tracker, paid to hide in crowds and shadow candidates, recording their missteps for use by their opponents. One night, after an anonymous text tip, Sam witnesses a congressional candidate and a mysterious blonde in a motel indiscretion that ends in murder, recording it all on his phone. Now Sam is a target.

Publisher's Summary

In 1935, Nate Heller is hired to escort Amelia Earhart on a speaking tour because of numerous cut-and-paste death threats against her life. Heller suspects the threats are a stunt by Earhart's publicity-hungry husband, and the detective’s growing closeness to the bisexual aviatrix leads to a steamy affair.

Two years later, when Earhart embarks on her flight around the world - and mysteriously disappears over the South Pacific - Uncle Sam enlists Heller in a clandestine search of Japanese waters for the popular Earhart... and the top-secret plane she was flying.

Blending the unsolved mystery and historical facts swirling around Earhart’s disappearance with Heller’s sarcastic wit, Max Allan Collins delivers another riveting tale of intrigue and betrayal, taking Heller far from his native Chicago. As he investigates, Heller discovers a treacherous plot involving marital betrayal and the U.S. government. Heller’s secret undercover mission leads him to Saipan, where Earhart is believed to be held prisoner. Nate’s heartbreaking attempted rescue leads the detective to return, many years later, to extract his final revenge.

I love the Nathan Heller series but the stories are only as good as the popularity of the actual person he's working for. Author Collins always captures the feel of the era in which he writes, seamlessly weaving true historical people events around the fictional Heller. As for this one, I have ever been interested in or impressed by Amelia Earhart. I feel she made reckless moves in her aviation career. Just because you can fly a plane doesn't mean you have the experience and resources to take a raggedy plane around the world. If you like Earhart, you'll like this interesting take on her disappearance. Nathan is still skirt chasing in his usual charming way.

The book starts off a little slow, but soon the reader is drawn into a captivating story of the life of Amelia Earhart, the circumstances of her last flight and attempted rescue. All of this seen through the eyes of the cynical detective, Nate Heller. There's something to the story, a cohesiveness and forlorn quality that hasn't been seen in the Heller Series since the first few books. Perhaps it's the increased volume of myths and rumors about Amelia's disappearance with which Collins can base his story, but there's an added depth to this story, and even to Heller himself. On the surface there's the same sardonic wit and wry humor the detective is known for, but in the second half of the book there's also a level of maturity the reader hasn't seen from Heller before. Overall this has to be one of my favorites in the series.